L is for Lover, Z is for Zombie
by Ooshka
Summary: AH/OOC Side-story from the Homestay universe, a belated birthday present for peppermintyrose. A barbecue, a zombie horde and the fact that Sookie, just once, wants to be the princess and not the frog make for a very action-packed weekend for the family!
1. Chapter 1

**A/N So...hello there! Welcome to the new side-story for the Homestay universe. This started as a birthday present for the lovely peppermintyrose...but it's been horribly, horribly delayed. And now I think it'll be way too large to be a workable one-shot, so I'm thinking about four chapters...but don't quote me on that!**

**So this story is going back in time from where we left everyone in Home Truths - way, way, way back. It's March and Amelia is 12, Felicia 9, Sam 6, Tray 5 and Pam is just about to turn 3.**

**Disclaimer: Not mine. I just threw a few zombies into the mix.**

SPOV

When I walked into the living room, I realised the worst had indeed happened. "Why didn't anyone tell me?" I asked, but it was pretty pointless. Sam and Tray were far too busy defending the fort they'd built out of blocks from the ruthless assault of Felicia. "Oops, didn't see it" she said, as she lobbed a tennis ball at their creation.

"You did!" Sam yelled. "You did see it, and you're lying!"

"No one saw Pam, though?" I asked, but, again, I didn't get an answer. I looked at Pam, who was lying stretched out in the middle of the family room, snoring loudly, and sighed.

Pam had given up naps, but some days she still really needed one. Especially today, when she was still coming down from the excitement of Amelia's 12th birthday party which had been held at the weekend. Following the big girls around had exhausted her, and today I'd been paying the price for that.

Our trip to the playground on the way home from walking the bigger kids to school had ended in a stand-off when Pam refused to climb up onto the slide herself and yelled "I too little for ladders! Go away!" When I wouldn't she'd dialled down to exasperation and admitted "I not happy!" That made two of us.

The afternoon hadn't been much better. Pam had repeatedly asked where Eric was and I'd been all but accused of hiding him from her. "Daddy not here! I want Daddy! You get Daddy, NOW!" Well, that wasn't happening and even my offer that we take the tea-set outside and play cooking games with a basin of water hadn't consoled her. Nothing was going to be as good as Daddy actually escaping from the dungeon I'd clearly locked him in and making it home.

There had been a brief respite when Pam had turned to crime and, with the aid of her little pink stool, had cleared most of Amelia's things from her bookcase. I'd found them, carefully wrapped in Pam's blanket, on her bed and guarded by her stuffed rabbit Mr Fluffy. I'd had a long, hard debate with myself about whether it was better to face the wrath of Amelia when she got home from school, or the possible tantrum from Pam that returning the pilfered things might set off. I realised I'd sunk pretty low on the scale of good mothering when I started calculating how much of Amelia's ire would be directed at Pam, rather than me, and, in the end, I returned what I could find.

But obviously all of that subterfuge had worn Pam out, and now I had a small child fast asleep on her stomach on the floor. I didn't really blame her. I found days like this exhausting too, and that was before the other kids had all arrived home and started clamouring for attention and food from me as though I was some kind of mum-shaped vending machine. I fondly remembered the days when Friday afternoon meant a weekend stretched out in front of you and the bliss of escaping from the responsibilities of work.

Now all my responsibilities lived in my house with me and the weekend just meant more fighting, moaning and demands for food.

"Pam" I said, patting her back. "Pam, wake up!"

"Don't touch our stuff!" Sam yelled.

"I'm not touching anything of yours; I'm just trying to get this ball into the corner of the room. Not my fault your stupid blocks are in the way" Felicia yelled back.

Pam didn't stir. "Pam," I tried again, but there wasn't even a pause in the snoring.

Felicia realised what was happening. "Pom-pom!" she yelled. "Wake up!" Nope. Nothing.

"Why's Pam asleep?" Tray asked.

"She's sleepy. I guess," I told him, while giving Pam a gentle shake. It didn't work.

"I'm not," Tray added, clearly worried I might arbitrarily declare that it was bedtime.

"Pa-am," I tried. "Pam, wake up!" I wondered how long I'd have to stay crouched here, trying to wake her up, but then Amelia came into the room.

"Pam's asleep," Amelia announced. "Why did you let her fall asleep? You know she won't sleep tonight now."

One of Amelia's most favourite things in the world was mothering Pam, and, if she could combine it with bossing me, all the better. "Yeah. I know." It was, after all, the reason why I was trying to wake her up and not just letting her continue her impromptu sleep session.

"We'll have to wake her up now!" Amelia declared.

"I was actually trying to do that," I said, feeling a bit defensive.

"But she isn't awake." Amelia crouched down too. "Pammy-wammy-woo," she cooed into her sister's ear. "Wake up!"

Pam made a small sighing noise and rubbed her face with her hand, but didn't open her eyes.

"She won't wake up until Daddy's home," Felicia yelled, managing to look at me and aim a swift kick at the block fort at the same time. Sam almost growled at her and I looked away before I had to see the inevitable fight erupt.

Some days, it was just tempting to leave them to it.

"I hate you!" Sam yelled.

"Yeah. So?" Felicia didn't seem all that bothered, which really bothered Sam.

"So! So…" I didn't think we really wanted to get to the end of that 'so'. Sam in a strop wasn't something any of us needed to witness. "Hey," I interrupted. "If you can't all get along, just go to your bedrooms and be alone for a bit."

"I can't be alone in my room; I have to share it with him!" Sam said, pointing to Tray.

"Oh, God! You're such a _loser_. Fine, _I'll_ go to _my_ room, which I don't have to share." Felicia started to stalk out of the room, but on her way past Pam she yelled "Look! Daddy's here!" and Pam managed to rouse herself a little.

"Daddy?" she whispered, as she sat up and rubbed her eyes.

"No, he's not home," Amelia informed her. "Felicia's wrong. She gets confused about stuff; it was probably just Bob going through the cat-door."

"I'm not confused!" Felicia yelled from the hallway. Pam burst into tears, great noisy heart-wrenching sobs of distress. "Daaaaddddy!" she wailed.

"Look what you've done now, Leesh!" Amelia yelled into the hallway.

"I can't see through walls!" Felicia screamed back.

"You can hear her!" Amelia yelled in response.

"Not over you!"

I grabbed Amelia's arm, trying to stop the inevitable reply to that, and put the other arm around Pam, who squirmed a little. "I want Daddy!" she cried.

"I know. He'll be home soon." I hoped. I hoped very, very much. I was, in fact, quite tempted to text Eric and say something about there being an emergency at home and see if it would get him here earlier, but that was how I felt at this time of the afternoon most days. It was about now I started measuring the time not by what it said on the clock, but by how many hours until final bedtime.

Waiting for that point in the evening, when they all finally shut up and left me alone was like being an alcoholic and desperate for that first drink. I was just hanging out for the silence.

Amelia and I watched two big, fat tears slowly slide down Pam's cheeks. She did know how to turn it on if she had to. "What's her problem?" Tray asked.

"No Dad yet," Sam replied, trying to repair the fort Felicia had all but destroyed.

"That's not…I mean. I'm not sad." Tray picked up a block and threw it up in the air a few times, slightly higher each time. Eventually he missed it and it came down, clipping Sam on the ear.

"Ow!"

"You're not sad because Dad'll make you do your reading," Amelia said to Tray, adding "But maybe you're just not going to be very good at school." She shrugged.

"I'm good at school," Tray said, quite sullenly before he sat down on the couch in a great huff.

Tray had been at school for nearly two months' now, and, honestly, it was hard to tell if he was or wasn't good at school because he hadn't yet made much of an effort. I'd had to outsource his nightly reading to Eric because I didn't have the energy left at the end of the day to physically hold him to the chair and make him read the words. As for writing, well, he'd yet to produce anything of consequence, despite his teacher's best efforts. But he seemed happy enough at school, and the teacher didn't think it was anything to worry about yet, so I was leaving it for now.

"Playing _isn't_ school, Tray," Amelia lectured. "It's not like pre-school." Tray stuck out his tongue at her. He did probably have a pretty good idea of what school was like, after spending his whole life going there to do parent-help or collect older siblings, and for most of the previous year he'd joined in with Sam's class every afternoon for the last mat-time of the day.

"Let's not pick on Tray, too much," I suggested to Amelia as Pam let out another wail of "Daddy!"

"Fine!" Amelia huffed. "I was just trying to help."

"Well, help with Pam, then," I suggested.

"OK. Pam…Pam! You can come and play in my room if you want."

"I want my daaaady!"

Amelia sighed. "I'll let you play with my wand."

Pam sniffed loudly, and then wiped her nose with the back of a tiny hand. "De lighting up one?" she asked.

"Yeah. Come on." Pam and Amelia left the room, and I stood up.

"OK, I'm leaving you guys in charge of cleaning up all the blocks," I said to Sam and Tray as I left the room, but I didn't get an answer. From down the hall I could hear Amelia attempting to lay down the law to Pam. "No, don't touch that!" In response, there was a great, anguished wail from Pam.

"Oh, look. Alright, Pam! But just that and nothing else."

Good luck to her.

I went back to trying to get dinner made, and, after a while Sam appeared in the kitchen with me. "Where's Pam?" he asked, looking around nervously.

"With Amelia." Sam visibly relaxed, and then came over to see what I was doing. "What's for dinner?" he asked.

"Steak."

"Really?" He completely failed to hide the astonishment from his voice. "Real steak?"

"Well, I resisted the temptation to glue beef mince back together," I said, but it kind of went over Sam's head. He was too busy trying to peer into the frypan to verify that what I said was actually correct.

"Does Dad know?"

"Well…no, not yet."

Sam looked thoughtful. "But Dad always does the steak."

"Mmm, but here's not here." And if I didn't feed the kids at a reasonable time, then they'd never go to bed and I was all about getting them bed.

Sam frowned. "But…does he know you're making it when he's not here?"

"I don't normally have to file the meal plans ahead of time, Sam." I turned away from the oven to see Sam not looking very impressed at that. "I mean, sometimes I just have to get on and do it."

Poor Sam, he was struggling with the idea of there being steak not cooked by Eric. "Look, you can help, if you want?"

"I can?"

"Yeah, just stand there and flip them over when I say." I handed Sam the spatula.

"OK," he said, happily, taking up his station next to the oven. "Maybe Dad'll be out tonight?" he said hopefully. "With clients?"

"Nope."

Sam was silent for a bit. "But there's a chance, right?" he asked.

"Well…I guess." That seemed to make him happy and he stopped asking me about Eric.

I carried on, getting Sam to flip the steak when it needed it, and then he spent a lot of time obsessively poking each piece until eventually I told him I could probably finish dinner by myself if he wanted to go and tell Tray to clean up. Sam left, and then Pam arrived, her hair now arranged into the two tiniest pigtails ever, and carrying Amelia's wand. "Abradababra!" she said dramatically.

"I think it's meant to be abracadabra," I suggested, while checking on the baby potatoes I had roasting.

"Yeah! I say dat!" Pam didn't take criticism well. "Abradababra! Mummy, you're a frog!"

"Am I? That's nice." Just once I'd like the magic around here to be used for something that was helpful to me, like a real underpants fairy. Or, at the very least, it might be nice to be turned into a princess.

"Yep. Be a frog, Mummy."

"Oh. Ribbit."

"No! Dat's not a frog. Be a frog!"

"I'm not jumping around, Pam."

"You're a frog!" I was slightly worried that Pam was never going to give that one up and I would, indeed, have to prove that I was now a frog, when we heard Eric announce his arrival at the front door and Pam sprinted off to be part of the welcoming committee.

I went back to being human, which was a relief.

EPOV

Sometimes coming home was great, and you'd almost feel like a conquering hero. At least, if I got greeted by Pam that's mostly how it went down.

Other days there was indifference. Or, like tonight, a rather disgruntled looking Sam on the other side of the door.

"You're home," he said, a little fucking accusingly.

"Yep."

"We're having steak."

"Are we?" That was surprising. Usually if we had steak, it was when I was here to cook it.

"Yeah. I made it." With that Sam started to walk off. Huh, I'd been replaced in my absence.

Pam ran into the hallway and screamed "Dadeee!" and then attached herself to my leg.

"Hi Pam." I picked her up and got jabbed with something sharp in the process. "Ow."

"Don't break de wand!" Pam yelled.

"I'm not breaking it. In fact, it's quite the opposite." Pam didn't seem to care that much about the fact there might be holes in me now. "Abradababra!" she yelled, really close to my ear and while waving the pointy end of that fucking plastic stick right next to my eye. "Sam's a frog!" she yelled.

"OK." I started to walk down the hallway to the kitchen, where, I presumed from the intel I'd so far gathered, there might be steak. Tray stuck his head out of his bedroom door and pulled it back in quickly as I passed. "We'll do reading later on," I said, but there was silence in reply. Apart from, that is, Sam saying rather loudly "He knows you're there, he saw you!"

"Shut up, Sam," Tray muttered.

"Abradababra!" Pam yelled, in my ear, again. "Tray! You're a frog!"

Tray didn't reply to that either. Pam and I carried on to the kitchen. "Oh. Hello," Sookie said, as I walked in. She was setting a bunch of plates out on the kitchen counter.

"Hello." I walked over to try to kiss Sookie, but it wasn't completely successful because I had to make sure that Pam didn't poke her mother in the back of the head with the plastic thing she was carrying.

"So, it's steak?" I asked.

"Yes," Sookie replied, sounding a little terse.

"I did not say a word." And I hadn't. Even though it was one of those kind of informal, but usually followed, rules that our family had that when it was steak, I cooked it.

"No, but I can tell by your breathing that you're a little annoyed." I didn't think that even deserved a reply. Sookie might think she knew me, but fuck; she was way off the mark.

I was simply surprised that we were having steak tonight. "But it's a pleasant surprise," I said to her.

"I'm sure. Just be thankful you're home in time to get your share. When Sam was in here before he was sizing up all the pieces and working out who was getting what."

"Well, I don't think we actually have to do it Sam's way." I was pretty sure we didn't.

"Yeah…you tell Sam that."

Pam was clearly bored and she decided to wave that fucking plastic weapon past my face again. "Abradababra!" she yelled.

"Abraca…" Sookie started to say, but Pam just yelled over her. Right in my fucking ear. "Daddy! You're a pwincess!"

"Am I? That's nice." I'd been worse things over the years.

Sookie looked over at Pam. "Really?" she asked.

"Yes!" Pam said emphatically, hitting me in the back of the head with the plastic stick she was holding as she turned to look at Sookie. "Daddy's a pwincess."

"And I'm a frog?"

"Yep." Pam turned to look at me and grazed my ear with the stick. Sookie didn't seem to like that answer though, and there was a loud sigh, following by a muttered "Why do I never get to be the freaking princess?"

Really, I couldn't answer that one and given that, as the princess, so far I was mostly being subjected to torture by plastic stick while my torturer squirmed in my arms, I didn't think it was a particularly great gig to start with. I would have said that to her, but she looked quite shitty and I began to wonder how that affected her ability to portion out dinner.

"You could make mom a princess, couldn't you Pam?"

Pam shook her head. "She's a frog."

"But if you can make her a frog, then you can make her a princess?" I thought it was worth a shot, but clearly, I'd misunderstood the rules of the game.

"No!" Pam yelled. "She's a frog!"

"How about a frog princess?" I thought that was a fairly reasonable suggestion but Sookie gave me a look that clearly stated what she thought of the idea, and Pam jabbed the pointy plastic stick into my lower back. And then she screamed "NO!" in my ear, and burst into tears. Fuck. Coming home was supposed to be the nice part of the day, but somehow I'd been replaced by Sam, Tray was hiding from me, Sookie was pissed at me when really she should be pissed at Pam and Pam had dissolved into a sobbing mess who was currently depositing snot all over the sleeve of my shirt.

Amelia walked into the kitchen then. "Oh my God!" she said. "Pam's crying her eyes out! What did you do, Dad?"

Some days it was very tempting to just turn around and leave again.

SPOV

Eric didn't seem particularly happy that steak had been cooked in his absence, and there really wasn't anything I could do about that. It wasn't my fault he wasn't here to do it, or that I'd forgotten to put the lamb casserole in to cook that morning, which had been my original plan for dinner.

OK, maybe that bit was my fault, but I couldn't help but feel that if I had fewer kids, I might have more of a chance of being organised. And their father, the person who liked to wander around with a coffee cup yelling "Where the fuck is my tie?" in the mornings, was not always a big help either.

All in all it was a miracle we ever got out the door to start the day, and that, when I did, I wasn't still wearing pyjamas. So the fact that we had steak for dinner was just one of those things Eric would have to deal with. Like I had had to deal with the fact one of my children kept trying to turn me into a frog.

Sam came back into the kitchen to check on the steak, which he did by poking each piece with his finger. "Is that a good idea?" Eric asked, as he tried to stop a still-sobbing Pam from throwing herself out of his arms and onto the floor. Amelia, who'd been trying to console Pam over Eric's shoulder, while muttering about how Pam was fine when she'd been playing with her, took her little sister out of Eric's arms with a glare.

"It's how they do it on MasterChef," Sam grumbled.

"What do they do?" Felicia demanded, now that she'd come into the kitchen as well. Somehow everyone always had a sixth sense about it getting close to dinner time. "Euw!" she said, leaning over to watch Sam. "I don't want a piece that Sam touched with his boogery finger. That's been up his nose!"

Eric pulled a face, and I shot him a look because I did not need him inciting the other kids to mutiny over dinner. "I'm sure it's OK, though," I said. "And that he's washed his hands." I glanced sideways at Sam who shot me a very guilty look. I tried to give him a look back which conveyed the varying messages of 'Euw!', 'Remember for next time!' and 'If anyone gets food poisoning I am making you clean the vomit off the bath mat this time!'

Not sure he got all of that.

I almost wanted to say 'Euw' myself, but I didn't want to start anything either. We were having steak, we were eating the steak that was there, and a few germs wouldn't kill us.

"OK. I am dishing up now," I announced to the assembled family. "Please go and wash up." I hoped that Eric might lead the kids off to do that, kind of like a pied piper, but instead he just stood there. He did say "Now!" very loudly, which made Felicia hustle out, although Amelia stayed put. "If you keep on shouting, she'll never cheer up!" she admonished Eric.

"I think she can handle it," Eric said, and Amelia walked out, still trying to soothe Pam. Eric then turned to Sam. "Go."

"Nah, I'm good because I, um…I've already washed my hands…" Sam seemed determined to brazen it out.

"You can wash them again. You too, Tray. Go now."

"I'm not…oh, poo…" Tray's voice came from just outside the door to the family room.

"OK, so they've gone now," Eric announced, as he walked over and wrapped himself around me and generally managed to hamper my progress in getting beans onto everyone's plates.

"Mmm-hmm," I agreed, trying to work my right arm free so I could get the spoon I was using back into the casserole dish that contained the beans.

"I should go and get changed, I guess," Eric murmured. He didn't seem to be in much of a hurry.

"Well, I'm nearly done." I wasn't, but I possibly wasn't ever going to be done if I didn't lose my limpet in a hurry. The kids would come back, dinner wouldn't be dished up and there'd be some kind of riot at which point I could bet that Eric would suddenly feel much more inclined to go and change and I'd be left throwing pieces of steak at hungry children in the hope they'd leave me in one piece.

Well, maybe I was exaggerating a little. But the reality wouldn't be far off.

"Eric," I said. "You're lovely."

"I'm a princess."

"Yes. And I love you, but please go and find someone else to annoy."

Eric sighed, but he released me. "Fine," he huffed, and he stalked off.

A few moments later, Tray crept in getting too close to Bob in the process, who hissed at him. Bob was terribly intolerant of the kids these days. I think he'd been stood on, or nearly stood on, so often that he'd decided that attack was the best form of defence.

"I didn't stand on Bob!" Tray said, pre-empting anything I might say. Unfortunately, he didn't realise that he also alerted Eric, who had just re-entered the kitchen, to his presence. "Tray," Eric said behind him. "After dinner, we're doing that reading."

Tray's shoulders fell. "I don't have to do it on a Friday," he muttered, but without much conviction.

"And then you'll have the same story about Saturday, and Sunday," Eric pointed out. "So, we'll do it tonight."

Tray sighed, but he stopped fighting. I handed Eric a couple of plates and hoped that we could all just sit down for a nice dinner.

EPOV

Dinner could be a little like feeding time at the zoo in our house. I was almost one hundred per cent certain that it was only the fact that they were worried about my reaction which stopped Tray and Sam actually fighting over who got the bigger piece of steak. Still, at least they fucking wanted steak.

"Mum!" Amelia said, trying to get Sookie's attention as she put the plates down in front of everyone. "Mum, I don't really like steak, remember?"

"Yes you do," I told her, looking at my own plate. I wondered if this was one of the pieces that Sam had stuck his finger in. Maybe he'd touched all of them?

"No. I don't!"

"I don't want steak!" Pam wailed, watching Amelia. Her little bottom lip wobbled dangerously.

"Pam. You love steak. I love steak." I hoped that would work.

Sure enough, Pam looked momentarily torn and snuck another glance at Amelia before starting to eat.

"I don't see why I have to eat what everyone else wants to eat?" Amelia complained. If she kept complaining like that, and not eating, she wouldn't have the problem of not liking steak anymore because Sam or Tray would steal her dinner out from under her nose.

"Well, you know, it's easier that way," Sookie said, sitting down in her own seat.

"Not for me!" Amelia replied.

"Oh, you moan so much!" Felicia told her. "Why don't you just build a bridge and get over it!"

"Why don't you just build a bridge and live under it?" Amelia sniped back.

"Where are we going to put a bridge?" Tray asked.

"It's not a real bridge," Sam told him.

"Dora goes over the troll bwidge," Pam threw in, desperately trying to keep up with the conversation.

Sookie looked over at Pam. "Eat some of the beans as well, Pam. Not just the steak and the chips."

Pam looked at Sookie in disbelief, and then her face crumpled. "I too little for beans!" she wailed.

Tray looked at her curiously. "I think…"

"Eat your beans, Tray," I said to him. He sighed, loudly. "You too, Pam."

"Nooo, Daddy! No!" Pam was really laying it on thick now. Amelia glared at me. "You've set her off, again!"

I wanted to point out that, actually, I was pretty sure that Sookie had set her off and if no one had ever mentioned the beans, Pam would have been fine.

"They're magic beans, Pam," I said to her.

"I too little for MAGIC BEANS!" she half-wailed, half-shouted.

"Are we getting a beanstalk instead of a bridge?" Tray asked.

"I just…I don't even know what planet you're from," Felicia said, looking at Tray.

"This one," Tray said, although he looked at Sam for confirmation. Sam shook his head in disbelief, a gesture Tray misunderstood. "Not this one?"

"School is wasted on you," Amelia said to him.

"I ate all my beans," I said to Pam, and she looked over at my plate, and sniffed loudly. "You magic now?" she asked.

"Possibly," I said. "Try one." Pam reluctantly put a bean in her mouth.

"So what happened at school today?" Sookie asked the kids.

"Stuff," Amelia replied, shrugging, and poking her food.

"Not _your_ school, our school, you nitwit," Felicia said. "No one cares about what you've done."

"Felicia, that's not very nice," Sookie admonished.

"Nope," Felicia agreed.

"She's missing the nice gene…or something. Anyway, she's defective." Amelia was quite annoyed now.

"Yeah. 'Cos I'm the one who won't even eat steak." Felicia sighed, and then turned to the boys. "So did you tell about the cross country?"

Sam shrugged and looked a little sheepish. Tray kept shovelling food in. "What about the cross country practice?" I asked. Their school was holding its annual cross country race in a week or so which meant daily practice runs. Tray loved that it got him out of the classroom; I was not looking forward to a long hot morning watching three races.

Sam elbowed Tray, and he stopped eating. "Watch it!" Then he realised Sam expected him to say something. "What?"

"Cross country," Sam repeated.

"Oh. Yeah. I was on the field first," Tray said, going back for another mouthful of food.

"First?" Sookie asked. "In the race?"

"Uh-huh," Tray said, through a mouthful of steak. "I goft dere first."

"You're a fast little thing, aren't you?" Felicia said to him, almost fondly. I half-expected she might reach over and ruffle his hair. So something was up there because I was pretty sure Felicia hadn't been fond of Tray, ever.

"First five year old boy?" I asked him.

Tray looked thoughtful, and then he turned to Sam. "Nah, 'cos then you turned up." He pointed at Sam with his fork, nearly taking out Sam's eye in the process. Good to see Sam's reflexes worked OK. If he just learnt to duck all the sharp objects flying around, he'd be fine.

"First out of the five and six year olds," Sam said, sighing. "They made us run together to save time." And that would be the problem. Being beaten by your younger brother, who'd only been at school for a few weeks, had to suck quite badly.

"That's great," I said to Tray.

"Yeah. Gotta be fast if you want to outrun zombies," Tray said, happily.

"Zombies are slow, not fast," Sam said with a certain amount of disdain.

"So are you, apparently," Felicia threw in.

"Shut up, Leesh!" Sam yelled.

"Well…where did you come?" Sookie asked him, probably trying to smooth things over. I thought she was going to make them worse.

"I came ninth, OK?" Sam half-yelled at his mother, proving me right.

"That's still good," Sookie said. "Top ten." She looked at me, and I guessed that was my cue to say something. "Well done, Sam."

Sam just sighed and didn't say anything for a moment, he just poked his food. "Who cares about a stupid cross country, anyway?" Amelia asked the room at large.

"Well not you, because you can't run five steps without moaning," Felicia said. "And I came sixth in my group, in case anyone cares."

Sookie and I both congratulated Felicia and then there was silence for a moment, which would have been a relief, except that I'd finished my dinner and it was a little boring. "Hey!" Tray said suddenly, pointing at me. "Dad's finished!"

"And he had the biggest piece!" Sam added.

"Well, Dad has a strategy," Sookie said.

"What?" Tray asked.

"He doesn't talk very much when he's eating." She wasn't wrong. I could never see the point in spending time making fucking small talk about shit when you had food right in front of you.

"Oh," Tray said. "Oh, yeah." He thought about that.

"Concentrate on your dinner, Tray," I reminded him.

He did, for a few moments. "Hey, what's invisible and smells like carrots?" he asked. Everyone ignored him. "A bunny fart!" he shouted.

"That's gross," Amelia said, dismissively.

"It's really funny," Tray informed her.

"If you're _five_." Amelia wasn't at all impressed with the joke.

"But bunnies eat carrots…so…so…" Tray was laughing so much he couldn't talk that much. "So its farts smell like carrots!"

"We get it," Felicia told him.

"Mr Fluffy is a bunny. He my bunny," Pam said. "He eats carrots."

"He's a stuffed bunny," Sam told her.

"You're a stuffed bunny," Felicia said. Amelia turned to her. "That doesn't even make sense," she said.

"You don't make sense."

Sometimes I really fucking thought that it couldn't be worse in a cage at the zoo. At least the lions didn't bitch over who was the fastest runner and tell terrible jokes over whatever carcass got thrown over the fence for them. They just ate, and got the hell of there. It seemed like a much better way of doing it.

"Hey, what's invisible and smells like steak?" Tray asked.

"OH!" Sam grabbed his nose. "My nose is burning!" he complained. Tray laughed so hard he just about fell off his chair, which sent Bob, who had been hiding down Amelia's end of the table probably getting steak from her, running out of the room. "Daddy!" Pam said. "Daddy dat's smelly!"

"Yes, Pam. Yes it is smelly. Tray, eat your dinner."

"It's a Tray fart!" Tray said, oblivious to the distress of his siblings, and Sookie, who was desperately trying to maintain her composure while breathing through her mouth.

"Yeah. We got that one," Felicia deadpanned.

"It's funny!" Tray yelled.

"It's smelly," Felicia replied.

"It's so…childish," Amelia threw in, but I don't think Tray cared.

"It's like you ate something rotten," Sam said to his brother.

"It's not nice!" Pam wailed, and then a big fat tear rolled down her cheek again. "I too little for smells!"

"It's dinner guys," I said. "Just eat your dinner."

After dinner wasn't much better, because I had to hunt down Tray and get him to read to me, and he wasn't stupid enough to leave a scent trail for me to follow.

"Bathtime?" Pam asked me, as she trailed after me down the hallway.

"Uh…not yet. Soon, though." I stuck my head into the family room. "Sam, have you seen Tray?"

"No…" Sam said, looking shifty.

"If you hadn't seen him, where is that he wouldn't be?"

"Um…try the living room, maybe…?"

I walked back down to the living room, Pam still trailing after me. She was holding a Barbie; at least, I think it used to be a Barbie. Mostly it was a mess of blonde hair and some sticking out bits of plastic. "Bathtime?" Pam asked.

"Soon." I looked into the living room, and, sure enough, wedged into a very small space between the couch and the bookcase, was Tray. "Tray, reading. Now."

Tray tried to brazen it out and keep up the pretence of not really being there, but he couldn't manage it for long. "I don't want to!" he said, in the end.

"This isn't a negotiation."

"What?"

"You have to do what I say, Tray."

"But…" Tray emerged from his hiding spot. "I hate reading."

"It's not that bad."

Tray sighed, which indicated that he did think it was that bad. Pam poked me in the leg with her doll. "Bath!" she said, with a fair amount of authority for someone her size.

"In a while, Pam. Why don't you go and play?"

"Play wif me?" she asked her big, blue eyes hopeful.

"Um…Tray's going to read with me now."

Pam's eyes turned from hopeful to angry in a flash. It was actually kind of impressive, well, it might have been if it hadn't been directed at me. "You suck!" she said, sounding much older than not-quite-three and she stomped off.

"Come on, Tray. Get your book bag out. The quicker we do this, the quicker it's over." I don't think that Tray appreciated just how fucking boring this was for me. I really wished he would get better at this, and then Sookie could do it with him. Before I got home from work. Because really, if I had to listen to another fucking book about the circus or some kids finding a lost puppy, I might go insane.

Tray looked at me, like I was speaking another language. "Book bag," I repeated.

"I don't…did I bring it home?" he asked me.

"How the fuck should I know? Just go and look." Tray sighed and walked off, and I waited, and I waited, and listened to the sound of someone thudding to the floor, and then Sam said "Watch out, you jerk!" and Tray said something I couldn't catch, which suggested he was the one being pinned to the floor.

Well, that was probably to be expected after the cross country practice debacle earlier. But, fuck, I just wanted to get Tray's reading over with.

Sookie stuck her head into the living room. "Haven't you found Tray yet?"

"Yeah. He's just getting his book bag." I sat down on the couch and then realised Sookie was glaring at me.

"OK. Don't worry! I'll go and get him then!" she huffed, and then she walked off yelling "Tray! Dad's waiting for you!"

"I'm coming!" Tray yelled, and there was some more thudding as, presumably, he managed to move Sam, and then he appeared in the living room, looking a little breathless.

"Book bag?" I asked.

Tray ran off again. This was taking fucking forever.

"Aren't you supposed to be helping Tray read?" Felicia asked, as she walked past the door.

"He's getting his book bag."

"No, he's chasing Pam around." She walked off.

"Tray!" I yelled, but there was no response. I contemplated getting off the couch and going to find him, but then I heard Amelia yell "Leave Pam alone!" and, after a moment or two, Tray skidded into the room holding, thank fuck, his book bag.

The phone started ringing and I heard both Amelia and Sookie yell out that they'd get it, and I could guarantee that wouldn't end well. But it still didn't make me any the less fucked off I got this job.

"OK," I said. "Let's do this." Tray sighed and came and sat next to me on the couch. "Hey, Dad," he said.

"Yes, Tray?"

"You know…uh, Jared?" Tray asked.

"Nope." I hoped this was something to do with the fucking reading assignment.

"In my class," Tray said, like that would mean more to me.

"Still no clue who he is Tray." Really they all blended together as one big bunch of kids wearing the same uniform. Tray should be having this conversation with Sookie, she always knew who all of the kids were talking about whenever they mentioned a name.

Tray sighed. "You do know," he muttered, and I decided to let him keep that illusion. "What about Jared?" I asked.

"Oh. Well. He's got that game."

"What…oh." I didn't really want to have this conversation again.

"Yeah. He says it's really awesome and when you shoot the zombies, like, all this blood hits the screen…not real blood though, eh? Just like, pretend. And you can rip the arms off the zombies, and stuff, but if you do that then you have to make sure you can get away because that makes them really mad…"

"As you'd think it would." Tray ignored my interruption and carried on. "Yeah…so. Sounds good, eh?" Tray looked at me hopefully.

"We've said no already Tray. That game is just too violent." That was the official party line. I was prepared to perhaps be a little more tolerant, but Sookie had delivered a long and impassioned statement about why she didn't think the kids needed to get the idea that bloodshed was ever the answer and it was hard enough to stop them all beating each other to death on a regular basis without it being practically encouraged by the enthusiastic use of a violent video game. She'd gone on for a while, as she'd really warmed to the subject. Unfortunately she'd decided to warm to it right on bedtime when I really would have had her warm to something else, and I got a little bored and little inclined to just agree with her wholeheartedly so we could fucking move on.

And now we had a party line that I had to toe.

"It's not violent. It's _funny_. 'Cos, like, when you rip a zombies arm off, you can use it to hit other zombies with…and sometimes they just lose things, like ears and noses, and then they have a fight with each other over whose nose it is…so that's funny!" I had to admit, that sounded kind of funny.

"We've said no."

"Mum said no."

"So…that's the same thing."

"It's not."

"I'm not going to argue with you over it, anymore." Tray folded his arms, but at least he shut up. Saying that to some of the other kids, Amelia in particular, just incited them to keep going because you clearly hadn't seen their point yet.

Fuck. She so got that from Sookie.

"Read the book, Tray," I reminded him.

"Oh. Oh, alright then." He pulled a rather battered looking reader out of his book bag.

"What's this one called?" I asked him.

Tray looked at the cover, then back at me, then at the book again. "It's got cows…" he said in the end. I looked at the cover. "Katie and the Cow Show," I read out. So, fuck, yet another fucking story about the idyllic life of rural New Zealand.

Why were these books all so fucking boring?

And the process of reading them…well, of Tray haltingly reading them, was even more boring. You were supposed to let them try to work out the words themselves, by looking at the picture or by sounding it out, but, fuck, that took forever and none of it stuck in Tray's brain. By about page five I was rapidly losing patience.

"Cat-i-ee…" Tray read out, again.

"It's Katie, Tray! We've been over that one."

"Katie…wh…w…ee...nnn…tt…wanted…"

"No. It says 'went', you sounded it out then you just guessed a word."

Tray sighed. "Went and…sh…uh…shoot the gut and…"

"Hang on. What does that say?" I looked at the page. "It says 'shut the gate', Tray. Nothing about shooting."

"This book is so lame!" Tray said in disgust. I couldn't disagree with him.

"How about I just sign the journal to say you've done it?"

"Sweet." Tray pulled the journal out of his book bag and handed it to me.

"I'll need a pen. Come into the office with me." I walked to the office and Tray trotted along behind me. He'd gone back to his earlier topic of conversation.

"So, like, you have to escape the zombies and not get bitten by a zombie, and sometimes they bite someone and their whole jaw stays there and there's like blood and teeth and stuff EVERYWHERE and it's really gross and really, really, funny."

"Sounds it." I sat at my desk and wrote in the journal _Tray tried. _I thought about adding something else, but I couldn't see the point in lying. I signed the journal. Pam came in. "Bathtime?" she asked, hopefully.

"Soon," I said to her. "You can, uh, go and make a start." Pam disappeared off again.

"So…I did OK, huh Dad?" Tray asked.

"Well…" I wasn't sure what to say to him. And then I thought of something. I grabbed a pad and wrote something on that. "What's that say?" I asked Tray.

"Zombie."

I wrote something else. "And that?"

"Gun."

"And…that?"

"Um…kill?" Tray looked at me for confirmation.

"Yes. Yes, Tray. That's right. See you can fucking read."

Tray shrugged and didn't seem particularly impressed at his reading skills. "So did you write anything at school today?" While he might be able to read, selectively, he had yet to produce anything in writing himself. Sookie was getting more than a little frustrated with him even though, as she reported it to me, the teacher had said that it just took time with some kids.

"No," Tray said, looking at his feet. "But I drew a cool picture of a zombie."

"That's not actually the same thing."

Tray shrugged. "Yeah…but…Ms Yarnell said that it was OK."

Ms Yarnell was far too lenient, I thought, but probably she figured they didn't pay her enough to force Tray to write. Fuck knows I didn't like the idea of having to do it. "Well, try harder on Monday."

Tray made a non-committal noise and I put the journal and the reader back into his book bag and handed them to him, expecting he'd now leave. But he didn't. I hoped he wasn't going to start on about the zombie game again.

Instead he had other ideas. "Daaaad," he began, in the way that you knew was never going to end well. "Can we play zombies now?"

"What? Oh." Zombies was the favourite pre-bedtime game these days and made me fucking nostalgic for the days of pirates when mostly I'd had to just sit beside the bath tub and make sure that the floor didn't get too flooded. Now I was expected to be the zombie and withstand varying amounts of gunfire and sword attacks as I ambled through the house.

It was fucking exhausting.

"Pleeease?" Tray whined. "I was really good. And I did all my reading!"

I didn't have the heart to contradict him. "Fine. Zombies it is then."

SPOV

In the midst of all the after-dinner chaos, and me trying to get Eric to actually do Tray's reading with him, the phone rang. It wasn't really the best time to take a phone call, but Amelia trying to push me out of the way to get to it wasn't helpful either as I'd never get the phone back.

"No. I'll get it!" I said to her, which made her frown at me and stomp off. And it was a good thing I did, because on the other end of the phone was Judith and it was going to take me long enough to get rid of her, without Amelia having had a long conversation with her first.

"Oh, good. You're there," Judith said, after I greeted her. "It's all going to poo, and it's been shifted to our place, which just…freaking annoys me. As usual!"

"What? What has?" I felt like I'd missed a vital part of the conversation and I was tempted to call Amelia back and get her to interpret as she seemed to be pretty fluent in Compton Dramatics, or, at any rate, these weird conversations that started half-way through.

"Didn't Portia text you?" Judith demanded, and I felt like maybe I was one of a, probably growing, list of people who were on the wrong side of Judith at that moment. Not a place I ever wanted to be.

"No…" I said, slowly, and then I waited for the explosion.

"She just does it to piss me off, I swear!" Judith hissed into the phone. "She said she would organise it all and now she's pulled out at the last moment and I just bet that she didn't text you because she's got no money on her phone because Mum gave Sarah money for her phone last week, so Portia'll have her nose all out of joint about it. God, I freaking hate my family at times!"

There wasn't much I could say to that statement, not to my ex-sister in law, anyway. The remarkable thing was how much she sounded like Amelia when she said it.

Luckily a response didn't seem to be required, because Judith just kept going. "See, I knew you looked at me funny the other day when I said I'd have to go shopping after work with all the kids and what a drag that was going to be. I should have realised you didn't know you guys were invited! Bloody Caro, she leaves it all to the last minute to tell us she's coming over from Sydney, and bringing the fiance, so we get no time to organise, and then Portia throws a total spanner in the works. But you're coming, right? Because it's already a freaking disaster and I need someone on my side when it all turns to crappiness."

There was so much I wanted to contradict about what Judith was saying. For one thing, I thought I'd looked at her pretty happily when she'd mentioned in passing the shopping required for the family function I thought we'd been exempted from. And they weren't my family anyway. And I didn't want to take sides with any of them against any of the others because I was sure that when push came to shove, all of them, Judith included, would side with each other over me because after all, I was just their brother's widow.

And I'd married someone else.

So no, I didn't want to go. I wanted to say 'sorry, but it's a bit late and we have other plans that don't involve bitching, fighting, and Lorena making that face again when she realises you're only doing a barbecue for dinner'.

"Yeah. Of course we'll be there. What should I bring?" At times like these I really wished I was Eric and I could just pretend that the rules of a polite society didn't apply to me.

It must be nice to be American. Or maybe it was just Eric. Either way, he'd have got us out of this in a flash.

I'd just dug us deeper into the pit of despair that was a backyard filled with Bill's relatives and assorted barbecued meats.

"Well, we've kind of got stuck with getting all the meat…because no one else can afford it. And, uh, Portia's doing a pasta salad and some bread…probably enough for two people. And Sarah's doing a green salad…don't expect it to be fancy. I guess…um, well if you wanted to do a potato salad, that'd be helpful…" Judith trailed off.

"And maybe if we bring some extra meat?"

"Yeah. That'd be good too." I mentally kicked myself and wondered how the hell I had managed to not only agree to go, but had ended up providing a large portion of the food as well. Somehow that was the way it happened every time and I didn't know how I could stop it happening now.

Not when it was, what, nine years since Bill had died?

"OK. No problem," I said to Judith. "Well, I'd better go and see what's happening about bedtime." Pam had wandered into the kitchen and back out again, probably looking for Eric. I wouldn't have worried so much except that she was naked.

"Yeah. I'm pretending that's not happening in this house," she replied. "So, we'll see you tomorrow then. About two?"

"Yep. We'll be there." Well I would, because I'd promised. The kids would be there because I was charge of them, and Eric would…I hoped. I also hoped the level of grumpiness about the whole thing wasn't too bad.

I put the phone back in its cradle and started my search for Pam. She couldn't be too far away because just outside the kitchen door the Barbie she'd been clutching had been discarded. However, what was more disturbing than the sudden disappearance of a naked two year old, were the awful, terrible noises coming from further down the hallway. Something between a howl and a grunt and a wail…followed by Tray shouting "It's going to eat me!", and then Felicia yelling "You haven't got any brains, you're fine!", followed by Sam announcing he was going to kill it, Amelia yelling at everyone to shut up, and Pam shrieking wordlessly at the top of her lungs in pure excitement.

OK. So that would be a very large and very, very loud zombie stomping around our house then. I decided to perhaps stay where I was in the kitchen and try to avoid all zombie-related activities. Bob turned up and gave the abandoned Barbie doll an exploratory sniff. "They might be heading this way," I warned him. "If I was you, I'd head for the hills. Or, the cat door. Try to make it out the cat door." Bob looked at me, and then, I'm pretty sure he nodded before doing just as I'd suggested.

Bob really got me, but I didn't get where this current obsession with zombies which had overtaken our house had come from. Although I had my suspicions. Sure, Tray was a little obsessed with getting that really violent videogame which Eric and I had said we wouldn't buy him, but he probably wouldn't have even noticed it if he hadn't seen Eric looking at it while we were in the mall one Saturday. Buying Pam a swimsuit, and supposedly, not going near any of the shops that sold videogames in the first place.

But if you took your eye off Eric, he wandered off. And Tray followed him. And the next thing you knew you were having a discussion about why videogames that featured a bazillion ways to kill things weren't a great idea when Tray had already been told that day that it wasn't OK to teach Pam to wrestle by sitting on her while she screamed.

Luckily, Eric agreed with that. Or, at the very least, had the common decency to pretend that he did.

Sam rounded the corner and looked at me. "We have to kill the zombie!" he shouted, and he took off. I wondered if I needed to be worried that it looked like he was carrying a weapon.

Probably not. Eric had withstood a lot of plastic sword blows over the years. He'd survive a few more, I decided.

I went to the laundry and picked up the basket of clothes I'd folded earlier and then made the tactical error of venturing into the war-zone as I tried to get to the bedroom to put them away. I turned the corner of the hall and collided with the zombie, who promptly attempted to eat me. I think.

Mostly there was just a lot of slobbering on my neck. "That's really not helpful," I said to Eric, but in response all I got was "Eurrgh!"

"It's got Mum!" Sam shouted in the background, and Tray said "I'm going to take his leg off!" and I hoped that what he was carrying was actually plastic because I wasn't in the mood to get blood off the clean laundry.

Eric had now pinned me to him and showed no signs of letting up the slobbering. Also, there were now wandering hands. It was nice that he was using the game he was playing with the kids as an excuse to grope me, but it perhaps wasn't the most appropriate thing to do.

"Mum!" Sam said to me. "Mum, you have to fight the zombie!"

"I haven't got a free hand." My arms were basically trapped between Eric and the laundry basket.

"You could drop the laundry on his toe?" Tray suggested. "And then his foot might fall off and that'd be _funny_!"

"You guys know this is pretend, right?" I asked them as Eric said "Nrr…erugh" loudly, in my ear.

"Yes!" Sam said, sounding a little disgusted at my stupidity. It wasn't him I was worried about so much as Tray who tended to get a little bit carried away with trying to discover how best to actually dismantle Eric.

If he ever managed to do it he'd be gutted the first night he discovered I was the only parent left and I'm not the one who wants to pretend to be a zombie.

Although quite frankly, right at that moment, with the slobbering and the holding me in place and the fact that Eric was generally stopping me from completing my nightly round of chores, I was inclined to let Sam and Tray do their worst.

And then Felicia piped up in the background and said "If you try to tip him over, he'll be stuffed. Zombies are like turtles." Eric must have decided to turn his attention to her, because he released me and with another roar-grunt he set off, slowly, after Felicia with Tray still attached to one of his legs and Sam in pursuit.

"Do you realise that Pam hasn't had her bath?" Amelia asked me, as I'd just about made it my bedroom.

"Yes. But given she had that impromptu nap, she'll probably last for a bit longer." I hoped that was the case, and that she hadn't curled up somewhere, naked, and gone to sleep. I opened one of the dresser drawers and started putting clothes in.

"Well, she shouldn't have had that nap," Amelia said, clearly trying to get the last word in, and then she left. I put everything away and ventured back into the hallway where I discovered that Eric the zombie had picked up some speed because he jogged around a corner and knocked me over.

"What were you doing there?" he asked, having clearly also recovered his powers of speech.

"Walking. Through the house. Like a normal person." Eric held out his hand and hauled me up, but he didn't apologise, and then he turned and with another zombie-roar, took off after the kids.

I was going right off zombies. Pam ran out of her room, still naked, and now brandishing Amelia's toy wand again. "Pam!" I called. "Pam, bathtime!"

"Nooo!" she wailed, and she kept running.

Oh, fine then. She could be Eric's problem. She'd prefer that anyway.

I went back to trying to hide in the kitchen from them all, hoping that the roars and shouts meant that everyone was still far, far away from me. It lasted for a while, and then I heard the tell-tale sounds of Pam approaching and, from the sound of it, there was a large and annoying zombie stomping along behind her.

And then I heard a yell of anguish from Pam. "You standed on Barbie!" she yelled. "Say sowwy!"

I stuck my head out the door to see how Eric was going to get out of this one. "I think the problem, Pam, is that the doll was lying on the floor instead of put away in the toy box," he said. I wanted to point out that it was possible to simply walk down the hall and still run afoul of Eric and his big feet, so I didn't feel like his argument was completely water-tight.

Pam wasn't buying it either. She stamped her foot, which looked kind of funny given her complete lack of clothes, and she didn't seem to take too kindly to the fact Eric was smiling at her because of it. "You hafta say sowwy a'cos you hurted her!"

"Really, Pam?"

"Yes!"

Eric picked up the Barbie from where she lay sprawled on the ground and said "Dearest Barbie, vision of love and beauty, I am mortified that my foot has squashed your smooth and voluptuous body." I waited a moment or two for Eric to add something about how it was, however, clearly Barbie's fault for leaving her smooth and voluptuous body where Eric wanted to put his foot…but he didn't.

Huh. Well, that was nice for Barbie, I guessed.

"Dat's better Daddy." Pam took back the Barbie. "Come on, Dearwest. Is bathtime!"

Eric looked at me. "What?" he asked.

"Nothing." I didn't want to be all grumpy about ranking lower than the stupid doll. But I was. Just once I wanted to actually get an apology for being knocked about and trampled all over in the name of zombie eradication. Just once I wanted someone to notice that I was actually here and not just because it was fun to grab my bum when he was pretending to be a zombie. Just once I wanted to be the princess and not the frog.

"It just might be nice to get an apology occasionally," I muttered.

"For what?" Eric asked.

"Never mind." I turned and walked back into the kitchen. I didn't really know what I was expecting, anyway. Just…something. Something I hadn't quite gotten.

It probably didn't matter anyway.

**Thanks for reading!**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N Well this took longer than I thought it would, but here it is! **

**Disclaimer: Still not mine. I have a nearly four year old who likes to boss me around now. Fictional characters are so much easier to live with!**

EPOV

Something was up with Sookie, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was. She was acting fucking weird, and it mostly seemed to be over the way I'd treated Pam's Barbie doll. Normally, if anyone was going to give me shit over the way I'd treated a Barbie, it would be Pam herself.

All in all it made hanging out with Pam and trying to get her to go to bed suddenly seem a lot more appealing, which was a pretty mean fucking feat. Putting Pam to bed was a chore and Sookie and I had resorted to a round of 'rock paper scissors' more than once to try to get out of it.

Of course the real challenge was then persuading Pam that whoever had won the game was the parent she actually wanted to put her to bed. Usually she just demanded I go with her and then assumed that her word was the final one on the matter.

I liked to think that she got that from Sookie.

Although normally Sookie was slightly more even-tempered than Pam. The fact she was so off-kilter tonight was worrying. I briefly considered whether it was worth my while paying Sam, who'd proved himself so helpful in the kitchen earlier, to act as bartender and pour Sookie a cocktail before I got home at night so I wouldn't have to face any more evenings with her in this kind of mood.

But you probably weren't encouraged to let six year olds loose with alcohol on a regular basis.

I was engrossed in worrying about Sookie, though, and missed a lot of what Pam was saying to me while she was in the bath. I didn't think any of it was particularly important, though, so I figured that I was probably good.

Sadly, I was fucking mistaken on that front. Clearly, I had missed the part where Pam had set out the parameters of the night's bath and, when I pulled down the shower nozzle to spray her hair with water, I got rewarded with a piercing fucking scream that wouldn't have been out of place if she'd just been run through with a sword.

"I say'd no hair-washin' Daddy! I say dat!"

"Yeah. But it's dirty." It probably wasn't. It wasn't like there was a lot of it, for a start. Unlike Amelia who'd seemed to spend half of her childhood chewing the ends of her hair, either accidentally or on purpose I could never tell, or Felicia, who seemed to have the unerring knack of managing to trail at least one wisp of hair into every sticky substance going, Pam's hair was practically non-existent and, therefore, practically dirt-proof.

And it was pretty obvious that came from my side of the gene pool.

But now that I had committed to washing Pam's hair, more out of habit than anything else, we were going through with the exercise no matter how much she wanted to complain. And she liked to complain, a lot.

I wasn't even going to contemplate trying to work out where she got those genes from.

"I too little for hairwash!" Pam wailed, loudly. In an attempt to drown her out I started rinsing her hair with the shower attachment. That didn't improve the situation.

"Daaaady!" Pam wailed. "Dere's water in my eyes!" Pam's voice was now at a level that could possible rival the sound of a plane landing on the roof of our house.

"You're fine," I told her, but I don't think she believed me. "I NOT FINE!" she shrieked, just at the point when Sookie stuck her head into the bathroom.

"What's wrong?" she asked, and Pam, sensing that sympathy was imminent, yelled "I too little for hairwash! Muuuumy!"

"Oh. Well you could have left it for tonight," Sookie said to me, which wasn't all that fucking helpful because Pam might be small, but she wasn't stupid and that was just going to add fuel to the fire Pam was currently trying to set.

"There was some, uh…sand…" I ventured. Most of the kids had sand permanently in their hair at this age. Tray still did on a regular basis.

"No sand!" Pam yelled, at the same time as Sookie mused "But she didn't go to preschool today, so I don't see how."

I gave Sookie a look which I thought spelled out exactly what my strategy was and that I just needed her to play along because there was no backing out now.

Sookie and I were clearly not on the same wavelength that night, because all I got was a loud sigh and then she left, leaving Pam to wail "Muuuumy!" at the closed door.

"Mouth closed Pam; I want to rinse the shampoo off."

"Muuuu…." Pam spluttered noisily. "Dere's water in my mouth!"

"I did warn you." I wished someone had warned me that Sookie was going to be so fucking grumpy tonight though. It was Friday night which meant that we had the weekend to look forward. And I loved weekends because I didn't have to fucking go anywhere for two days and I actually got to check on what everyone was up to. And sure, we had the kids' activities to go to, or occasionally Sookie discovered some errand that we all had to complete, and I did spend quite a bit of time driving Amelia places, but it was still better than work.

As long as Sookie wasn't shitty with me, that was.

When I'd washed Pam's hair, and the rest of her, and her sobs had mostly subsided, I pulled her out of the bath and wrapped her in a towel. "Dat's not my towel!" Pam yelled at me.

"But it's _a_ towel, and that's good enough…" I thought it was, but Pam cut me off. "Want my Barbie towel!"

"I don't…" I looked around for any pink towels…nope, nothing pink. There was a blue one. I reached out to take it and Pam screamed "Not the twuck one!"

"Well, there isn't a Barbie towel, so the one you have is fine, Pam. It's drying you perfectly well."

"Want my Barbie towel!"

"It is not in the bathroom." I thought that I was doing a fucking good job of trying to have a reasonable conversation with Pam about the towels, but, just as I said that, Amelia opened the door and said "Don't yell at Pam, she's crying!"

"Yes. She is. About a towel. And she yelled first." I continued trying to dry Pam, while she wiggled around trying to stop me.

"But her towel is on the rack," Amelia said, pointing to something purple. "You should use that one." With that, she left, clearly feeling her job was done.

I sighed, and pulled the purple towel down. It had fairies all over it. "This is a fairy towel," I said to Pam.

"Is my towel!" she wailed.

"But you said you had a Barbie towel. This isn't a Barbie towel. It isn't pink." I didn't want to even contemplate the fact that I knew that Barbie towels were pink and fairy towels were purple or green.

"Is my fairy towel!"

"But you said you had a Barbie towel."

"I say'd fairy! My fairy towel! Don' be mean, Daddy!" Pam let out a few sobs, but there were no tears this time. Clearly this was more about relishing the drama of the moment than actually being upset about a fucking towel.

"Well don't say Barbie when you mean fairy. It's very confusing," I told her, as I started drying her with the fairy towel.

"I's not con-shoosed. You bein' mean!"

At that point in our discussion, Sookie entered the bathroom again. "Why are you arguing with Pam?" she asked me, instead of asking the more obvious question of why Pam insisted on misremembering what she'd said.

"I'm not arguing with her, I'm simply pointing out that she can't expect me to know which towel she means if she doesn't describe it accurately."

Sookie frowned and sighed, loudly. "Well, whatever. You're taking a long time and I still need to get the boys in here before they break some furniture. They still think they're zombies and zombies, apparently, have really crappy spatial awareness."

I should have realised that the air of annoyance that was emanating from Sookie right at that moment wasn't really directed at the boys. But I was distracted by trying to get Pam into her pyjamas. "I'll be through as quick as I can," I said to Sookie. "It's just unfortunate Pam's been a little difficult."

There was silence for a moment, and I assumed Sookie was about to leave but then she said, in a voice that was little more than a hiss "Well, it's never _your_ fault, is it Eric?"

And then she left.

I looked at Pam, who was standing there watching the now-closed door with big, round eyes. "Mummy is mad'a'you," she said. "Mummy's bein' mean."

"Well…not really." Mummy was being more than a little unreasonable, I thought, but I wasn't going to confide that to Pam.

"I wanna plait!" Pam said happily. It took me a moment to figure out what she meant, but then I remembered the translation for that one.

"No. I don't braid hair. We'll just brush it." I seriously didn't think you could even braid Pam's hair. There just wasn't enough of it.

"But I wanna plait!"

"That's more something your mom would do. And she's not here." I hoped that might get Pam over her demands. It didn't.

"Mummy's gwumpy w'you an' won do my hair," Pam said sadly. "Is your fault."

"Ah…no. It's clearly not my fault." I realised that I was echoing Sookie's words, but that didn't matter because I was right. Sookie's mood had nothing to do with me because she'd been grumpy before I even got home.

I suspected that it had a lot to do with Pam who'd been here all day. But I refrained from throwing any accusations her way and busied myself with combing her hair instead.

Pam, thankfully, stopped mentioning braids and we managed to get her teeth brushed. Possibly the fact I shoved her toothbrush (the pink one) in her mouth had something to do with the fact that she shut up, but however it happened, I was happy with the outcome.

In her bedroom though, it was another matter. "Read Dora," Pam insisted, shoving a small, battered, book into my hands. I looked at it. I really didn't fucking want to read this book again.

"Let's read something else tonight…" I ventured, and Pam gave me a look that would have killed a zombie dead in its tracks. Sadly the zombies weren't in Pam's room. From what I could make out they were currently thundering down the hallway to the sound of Sookie yelling "I said get in the shower, now!"

"OK, Dora it is then," I agreed.

"I say dat!"

SPOV

At least one child was almost in bed, although I could hear her arguing with Eric over whether or not he would read her the Dora book again. We could all recite the Dora book by heart and it didn't seem to improve on multiple readings.

In fact nothing seemed to be improved by having to say it over and again. I was getting sick of the sound of my own voice long before Tray and Sam finally got into the shower. Telling them that I didn't care if the zombie horde was on the doorstep they had to be clean didn't seem to budge them, and in the end it was only the threat of spraying them with my perfume if they were stinky in the morning that made them get a move on.

I was so over my family, I really was.

Even Amelia could tell. "You are really in a bad mood," she announced, after she heard me issue the final edict to Sam and Tray. "Is this a period thing?"

I sighed. Ever since Amelia had started her own period she'd begun to see mine as a topic of conversation too. Or maybe she just thought we were in some kind of exclusive club. I guess curiosity was normal, but I could have done without the question right at that point in time.

"No. Not a period thing."

"Oh." Amelia didn't even bother trying to hide the surprise from her voice. She was silent for a moment and then she finally asked. "So what did Dad do?"

That was the million dollar question. I couldn't even really articulate it myself, and it was more what he hadn't done which had annoyed me in the first place. And if I actually spelled it out it sounded petty and silly, because if anyone needed to build a bridge around here, it was probably me.

So I didn't even try explaining. I just told Amelia that he hadn't done anything. She looked at me a little suspiciously, but then moved on to something that probably interested her a lot more than the reason for my bad mood. "Mum…?" she said, in the way all the kids did when they had something deeply important to tell me. Usually the follow up statement involved missing library books or forgotten permission slips or the dreaded 'There's a sausage sizzle today and I need cash, now'.

"Yes," I replied.

"You know Millie? In my class? Millie Harris?"

"Um. Yes." I was a little wary about where this was going. You could never really tell with Amelia. It might be a long and involved story about some amazing adventure Millie had been on because she didn't have four brothers and sisters, or it might be a rant about how Millie had pinched her when the teacher wasn't looking and Amelia had ended up in trouble for squealing during silent time in the library.

"Her real name's Amelia. But they just call her Millie."

"OK." That wasn't what I was expecting.

"Yeah. So she's always Millie, even to the teachers, but she's really Amelia." Amelia looked at me expectantly and I wasn't entirely sure what the correct response was. In the end I went with "OK."

From Amelia's expression, that was clearly the wrong choice. "Yeah!" she said, "So I'm not the only Amelia in my class. Again!"

"Right." She was probably correct and there wasn't really anything I could about it. I didn't think that a couple of months into the New Year was a good time to start petitioning the school to move Amelia to a class where she could be the only Amelia. I couldn't remember her ever being the only Amelia so there was every chance it wasn't even possible.

Sometimes I deeply regretted all the time I'd spent convincing Bill that's what we should name the baby. She didn't seem to appreciate the effort I'd gone to.

"I'm never the only Amelia!" she yelled at me, which confirmed my suspicions that I was the cause of Amelia's distress.

I didn't bother trying to explain, again, that life wasn't exactly all roses if no one else in the entire country seemed to have the same name as you. I just said "Well, at least it's not a new problem," and then I went to see if Felicia was getting ready to have a shower next.

By the time everyone was corralled in their bedrooms I was feeling a little bit better. I emptied the dryer in the laundry and took my time cleaning the lint out of all the little spaces where it gathered. The door was particularly bad for collecting it. I got a certain satisfaction out of the big ball of lint I collected and the fact that the dryer door no longer resembled an exploded teddy bear.

I carried my trophy through to the kitchen so I could put it in the bin, and found that Eric was busy with the coffee maker. The fact he'd managed to extricate himself from Pam's grasp was a good sign, and I hoped that meant the kids were all in bed. Although now that it was just the two of us, I wasn't sure what to say. I still felt annoyed and I still didn't have a very good reason for feeling that way.

I didn't have to worry for too long though, as, before I could figure out what to say to Eric's back to break the silence, Tray skittered into the kitchen.

"It's bed time," I pointed out, as I pulled out the drawer which held the built-in rubbish bin.

"Yeah, but I've gotta ask Dad something. It's really _important_."

I did the universal 'go on' motion with my hands and Tray jogged over to where Eric was pulling coffee cups out of the cupboard. "Hey Dad?"

"Yep." Eric put the cups down and turned to look at Tray.

"Who would win a fight between a zombie and a ninja?" Tray looked at Eric expectantly, Eric looked thoughtful.

"That's an important question?" I checked, and they both looked at me like I was the one asking the incredibly dumb question.

"Yeah!" Tray said, before turning back to Eric. "So, which one?"

I figured I was one dumb question in, I might as well go all out. "Why would Dad know, anyway?"

Tray just gave me a sad little look that time. As if my stupidity ran so deep, that there was clearly no hope.

Of course Eric could have stepped in and said something, but he didn't. I guess he was stuck pondering the mysteries of ninja and zombie hand to hand combat. I didn't want to fall over into the pit of annoyance I'd been trying to dig myself out of, but I couldn't help it. I didn't see why he got the 'really important' questions and I got the accusations about handing out the worst name in the world.

Just once I would like Sam to complain about his name, and then I could point him in Eric's direction. But Sam didn't seem to care that much about his name, and whether or not he was one of a bunch of Sam's milling about the school.

"Clearly ninja," Eric said in the end. "They're more tactical whereas zombies are motivated by hunger."

"Well, yeah. That's what I thought," Tray said. "What about zombie versus werewolf?"

"It probably depends on how hungry the zombie is," Eric mused.

"And I think it's time for bed now," I added, and Tray complied, although he shot me a rather disgusted look as he shuffled, painfully slowly, out of the kitchen.

And then he came back. "Zombie versus Transformer?" he asked.

"We'll talk about it tomorrow," Eric assured him, and he gave up at that point and ran down the hall yelling "Told you it would be the ninja!", presumably for Sam's benefit.

Why did everyone care so much about freaking zombies?

Felicia didn't seem to know either. She came in, just as I had opened my mouth to attempt a proper conversation with Eric. "So…what's he on about?" she asked.

"Who?" Eric sounded a little confused, as though the conversation with Tray had been wiped from his memory. The coffee machine was loud, but I still didn't think it completely drowned out Tray.

"Tray. He's wittering on about zombies and ninjas and vampires."

"He didn't ask about vampires," Eric announced, placing our coffee cups on the table. I took a seat. "That one's trickier because I can't imagine that zombie blood is really edible, so the vampire would have to rely on strength to kill them."

Felicia gave Eric a withering look. "What is the fascination with zombies, and why are you lot so obsessed with them?"

I had to admit to being deeply curious about that myself, and glad that it was Felicia who asked the question.

"You lot?" Eric asked, like she was speaking a foreign language to him. Possibly she was, sometimes the oddest turns of phrases stumped him completely.

"Yes. The people with penises," Felicia said, and then she turned on her heel and left, calling out "Night!" over her shoulder.

I was about to comment on how she seemed a little grumpy with everyone when Eric turned to me and said "There seems to be a recurring theme around here in my interactions with the people who don't have penises." And after that, I decided to just shut up and drink my coffee.

Occasionally, I thought, it would be nice if Eric employed that tactic.

Amelia walked in, and began talking almost immediately. "I didn't know that you could actually use Millie as a short version of Amelia, anyway."

Eric looked at me and raised his eyebrows. That one I got, he wanted to know if he needed to care. Probably not. I shook my head for no.

"I hadn't really thought about it," I said.

"But I could have been a Millie. All these years and I could have been a Millie, too."

"You still can, if you really want to," I pointed out, although I knew that from this moment on, whatever happened, it was still going to be my fault.

"Well, not _now_," Amelia said, scathingly. "There's already a Millie in my class."

"But not another Amelia," Eric said, looking pleased with himself that he'd remembered that fact. I was kind of thankful that it made Amelia turn on him.

"No one cares about my feelings!" she wailed, and then she left the room.

"I said there was a theme," Eric mused darkly, as he sat down at the table opposite me. I thought that at least Amelia had the onset of puberty to blame for her declining mood. Me, I had nothing.

"Did you tell Tray that a ninja could beat a werewolf?" Sam asked, as he arrived in the kitchen.

"What? No. Zombie." Eric frowned over his coffee cup.

"Well, duh." Sam seemed satisfied with that answer and left the kitchen, but not before nearly crashing into Felicia, who was coming back in.

"Sam's wandering around," she announced.

"Yep." Eric's lack of concern just provoked a very annoyed sigh from Felicia.

"You're not in bed," Sam pointed out.

"I'm _older_," Felicia announced.

"Doesn't matter. Back to bed. Now." Eric pointed down the hallway. Sam headed off in that direction, but Felicia stood her ground.

"Leesh…" Eric warned.

"Aaargh. Everyone here sucks!" Felicia stomped off.

"Maybe it's not just me," Eric mused, and he took a sip of coffee. I wondered whether I should tell him that it was just him, but it was OK, because I still loved him anyway, when Pam came in, rubbing her eyes and looking sleepy.

"I not seepy!" she announced, as she attempted to climb into Eric's lap.

"But it's bed time anyway," Eric said, as he put down his coffee cup and helped her up. Pam looked over at me from her new perch, clearly thrilled to have made it up there. She smiled at me broadly, before leaning over to sniff Eric's coffee.

"Careful," I warned her.

"I can't seep," she announced, a little sadly.

"It is particularly difficult to sleep if you're not actually lying down in a bed with your eyes closed, Pam." Pam turned to look at Eric over her shoulder and then, I think, just decided to ignore that comment.

"I stay here," she said.

"It's bed time," I reiterated.

"Dearwest is no seepy," she announced, waving the Barbie she was clutching above her head. Eric narrowly missed being wacked on the nose by it.

"She looks sleepy to me," Eric mused.

"Is her name Dearest now?" I asked. Pam nodded. Right. OK. That was…interesting.

Amelia came back in. "I said she wouldn't sleep if she had a nap," she announced.

"Yep. You did." There was no point me arguing with her, it was easier to just agree sometimes.

That didn't really suit Amelia though, who thought there needed to be more discussion on the matter. "Well, I was just trying to be helpful, Mum. Because if she falls asleep that late in the afternoon, then she doesn't want to sleep at night. You _know_ that."

"I do." Sometimes even going the not-arguing route didn't get me out of the conversation.

"Seeing as you're being so helpful, Ames," Eric began and Amelia stopped looking at me and started looking a bit worried. Statements from Eric which began with that phrase never ended well for the kids. "Why don't you take her back to bed? And read her the Dora book?"

"What?" Amelia asked at the same time as Pam announced "Dearwest loves Dora!"

"Why are you up?" Felicia asked Amelia from the safe distance of the doorway.

Amelia sighed and stopped trying to stare Eric down and turned to Felicia instead. "Because _I'm_ putting Pam back to bed, that's why."

"And reading Dora!" Pam crowed happily. She seemed to be looking more awake by the minute. I was a little worried this plan was going to backfire.

"OK. Everybody off to bed then," Eric said, as he lifted Pam off his lap.

"Fine!" Amelia huffed. "Come on, Pam. Let's go."

"I wanna sit on your bed," Pam told Amelia.

"No. We're going to your room."

"I no like my room! I want your room!" Pam protested. They left though, and I just hoped that they got it sorted out at some point.

And then I realised that Felicia was still there. "What did you need?" I asked her.

"I just want to know why everyone else is allowed to be up."

"They're not," Eric said, draining the last of his coffee. "And neither are you."

"Fine!" Felicia huffed, and she walked off again.

"And that," Eric said to me, "Should be that."

He had spoken too soon though. Pam ran back in. "Meela won' read the Dora book!"

"I just…" Amelia protested, as she arrived behind Pam, but Eric cut her off. "Read the book," he said.

"Oh, fine. But it's a silly book." Amelia was clearly going for her most world-weary, big-sister look.

"Is no silly!" Pam yelled. She was going for loud and she got it in one.

They left the kitchen and there was a sudden silence as Eric and I contemplated each other, possibly waiting for one of the kids to come back. Or something. I was definitely waiting for something.

Eric took his cup and rinsed it out. "Maybe we should go out for dinner tomorrow night?" he suggested, and then I remembered what I had to tell him.

"Oh. Yeah. That was Judith on the phone before. We've been invited to their place tomorrow night."

"OK," Eric said. "Just us?"

"Um. No. It's a whole family thing." I waited to see Eric's reaction to that statement.

"Judith's family?" he asked.

"Yep. Caroline's coming back and bringing her fiancé."

Eric turned to face me. "Are you sure?" he asked.

"Um, yes. That's what Judith said, well, actually she moaned about Caroline mucking them about and leaving it all until the last minute. And Portia's not done her bit again. She weasles out of everything."

"No," Eric frowned slightly. "I meant, are you sure we should go?"

EPOV

As soon as I asked the question, I realised it was the wrong fucking one. Sookie's face turned dark and I half-expected her to stamp her foot and yell something like 'I say dat!' at me.

Clearly, it was not my night, and my interactions with most of the family were just proving that. I hoped that Tray or even Sam might come back and need to engage me in an in-depth discussion about the killing prowess of zombies.

"Of course I'm sure!" Sookie said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I said we were going. And I'll have to go to the supermarket tomorrow. Remind me."

So we weren't just going we were feeding half the guests as well.

"I just meant, they're not our family. We don't have to feel obligated to go and, uh…you know. Put up with them all." Bill's mother was always a pain in the ass at these things and some of the sisters could be downright fucking nasty. Mostly to each other, but Sookie usually managed to get caught up in it too. The majority of the time I had no problems with Judith, but she did tend to drag Sookie into the shit that came with her family and I had to pick up the pieces afterwards.

However, Sookie obviously didn't see it that way. "They're Amelia and Felicia's family. We can't just pretend they don't exist."

That wasn't quite what I meant, but I wasn't sure how to get Sookie to understand what it was I did mean. She'd been grumpy when I got home and the evening hadn't done anything to improve her mood. She'd spent the whole time she was drinking her coffee watching me warily, like she was trying to work out where to bury the body after she killed me.

I really fucking hoped she wasn't planning to kill me.

"No, but maybe we could be…I don't know. Less involved in it all." I wasn't even sure how to explain it to Sookie, but I couldn't help but feel that we didn't need to be quite so tied up in everything the fucking Comptons did. I, for one, couldn't give a shit about the fiancé of a sister I'd met half a dozen times and I certainly did not feel the need to be part of his welcoming party.

Sookie, however, saw it differently. "Oh, how Eric? By not going? Fine, don't come with us then."

"No. That's not what I meant." This wasn't about me not wanting to go, it was about Sookie. Only she couldn't see that, and thought I was being fucking difficult for the sake of it.

"Well I don't know what you mean."

"No. I wish you did." The words were out of my mouth before I realised that I'd made another mistake. A fucking huge one.

"Maybe you should have married one of the people with penises then!" Sookie hissed, and then she walked into the laundry room, muttering something about having clothes to fold.

The night was just fucking getting worse.

Fuck. There wasn't much I could do about it now. I'd just have to ride it out until bedtime, and hoped I could fix it then.

And even if I had wanted to follow Sookie, and try to tell her that she had the wrong end of the fucking stick, I couldn't right at that moment. "Daddy!" Pam said, in a bright voice.

She was standing next to me, still clutching the Barbie. "Meela went'a bed. You read it now!" She pushed the Dora book into my leg.

"Sure, Pam. I'll read it now." I just wished there was a book I could read to Sookie that would get her over the bad mood.

SPOV

I realised that not everything Eric was saying was completely silly, and that he may have actually had a point. But that didn't make me feel any better about it. Maybe I was still waiting on my apology after being knocked over earlier, or maybe I just didn't want to face up to the fact that I'd let myself be roped in by Judith simply because I was afraid of what she thought of me.

I sighed, as I folded a t-shirt that I was pretty sure belonged to Tray. It wasn't that I wished Eric cared more about what people thought about him…I just wanted him to be a little bit understanding, I guessed. That was the best way to describe it.

Understanding goes a long way.

I put the t-shirt on Tray's pile, and then re-thought it. Picked it up. Had another look at it. No, it was Sam's t-shirt, wasn't it?

I put it on Sam's pile.

It looked a little small on that pile. No, it must be Tray's. I put it back where it had started and wondered how I was managing to wallow quite so effectively when I had all these other exciting questions taking up my brain power. Maybe that was my problem, I needed to get out more?

Just, obviously, not to Judith's place when all her family were there.

But there was no going back on it now, and I'd have to make the best of it. If Eric really decided not to go I could lie for him, I guessed, but I hoped it wouldn't come to that. I was a pretty crappy liar and all I needed was to give Lorena some ammunition. One hint that Eric might have bowed out and she'd be predicting our imminent divorce.

It probably wasn't a good thing that going to these events inevitably felt like going off to some kind of war.

I finished up my chores and then walked back through the kitchen. Eric wasn't there anymore, but I could at least tell that he hadn't upped and fled the house altogether. The sound of Pam's anguished wail of "Daaaady! Come back! I waaaant you!" alerted me to the fact that he'd only recently left her bedroom, and was now being summoned to return.

I really, really hoped that she went to sleep at some point.

I contemplated going to the living room, and watching some TV, but I just couldn't face it. Instead I thought maybe I'd take a shower, just me, all by myself.

And so I walked into our ensuite and locked the door behind me.

EPOV

About four-fifths of the way through the seventeenth reading of the Dora book, just as Dora was pulling Boots out of the icky-sticky sand using a rope that she'd handily stored in her backpack, I was struck with an idea. Maybe there was a book I could read to Sookie that would cheer her up, just as shouting "Map!" repeatedly seemed to make Pam happy.

I wished it fucking made her sleepy as well.

We finished the book, again. And I tried to get Pam to lie down and go to sleep, again. I hoped like fuck it would work this time around because I was liable to set fire to the fucking book rather than read it again.

And then Sookie would actually have a reason to be shitty with me.

"Stay, Daddy," Pam said, sounding a little sleepy.

"OK." I sat on her bedroom floor in the mostly dark and waited until her breathing slowed down, and then I could make my escape and put my plan into action.

Because, after all, sex solved everything.

SPOV

I came out of the bathroom feeling a little better and discovered Eric had not only escaped from Pam's clutches, but that he was now stretched out on the bed waiting for me.

I felt a little embarrassed about my outburst earlier and hoped we could just gloss over it and move on.

Eric apparently felt the same way, as he gave me a big smile. "Good shower?" he asked.

"Um…yes…" I wasn't sure how to answer that. It had been a good shower, but I hoped that Eric wasn't annoyed I'd locked him out of the bathroom while I was in there.

"Well, come over here then and I will read to you." Eric held up one of the library books that had been sitting in the pile beside the bed. Oh, I thought. We were on to that then.

I sat on my side of the bed and watched as Eric examined the cover. "It's, uh…hmmm…" he said, looking at the black and white stylised photo. "Is it one of those ones?"

"One of what ones?"

"The ones with all the whips and chains…and…things…" Eric started looking at the book suspiciously, like it might explode in his hands.

Sadly we'd both been burned before when it came to novels that hid some of their more erotic elements from the synopsis. Although I very rarely got to actually spend much time picking my books, given there was usually something else I had to pay attention to when I was at the library with the family.

Tray had been known to use books as skates on occasion. I didn't need to see him doing that in public. And nor did the librarians.

"I don't think so…" I said. I couldn't be categorically certain though.

"Um…OK." Eric took a deep breath. "You don't…" he ventured.

"Don't what?"

"Want. That. The whips and chains." Eric looked at me inquisitively.

"Oh. No. Um…no." It really didn't appeal. "That book was a mistake. Pam was crying because I wouldn't let her take out a Dora book that was identical to the Dora book we had at home so I just grabbed whatever was on the New Release stand. I didn't actually finish…that one." It had been a pretty horrific book.

"OK," Eric said. "I mean, I wouldn't really want to hit you. I might hurt you, and then you would most likely refuse to have sex with me, and I can't actually see where the fucking fun would be in it."

I nodded in agreement, but somewhere along the way, my mouth ran away with me and I said "And yet you happily knock me down in the hall without the slightest bit of guilt."

Eric turned to look at me. "So…you don't want to have sex with me?"

"I just…sometimes it would be nice to be a little bit less invisible. I guess." I shrugged.

"You wish you got to be the princess?"

"I don't know." I didn't have an answer and I couldn't see the point in going on and on about it.

Eric shrugged. "You could be the princess if you like. I'll go and get you one of Pam's crowns to wear. Maybe you could even be a queen? I promise I'll be a very loyal subject. You can order me about all you like." Eric lay back on the pillows expectantly. When I didn't say anything to that, he gave up and opened the book he was still holding. "Or, I'll just read you this. OK, here we go." He took a deep breath and began.

"_Jackson Caldicott strode into the boardroom as if he owned it. Of course he did, but that didn't stop Eugenia's sudden intake of breath as she took in the sight of him, his tailored, and very expensive, charcoal suit hanging from his shoulders as if it had been made to measure. It probably had, she reasoned. After all, a man like Jackson Caldicott wouldn't buy his suits off the rack. The fabric of his suit was probably Italian, and Eugenia longed to run her hand down one dark grey lapel and feel the weight of the wool."_

"OK. I'm bored now," Eric said. "I'd kind of like there to be some whips or chains or something other than suit porn. Maybe I could just put my suit on and then you'll want to have sex with me?"

"No. That's not true," I said, lying through my teeth. "Just the fact you put on a suit doesn't make me want to have sex with you."

"So you want to have sex with me, just because? Fucking excellent," Eric said happily.

"I didn't…" I started to protest, but Eric leaned over and nuzzled my neck. I might have been annoyed with Eric, the kids and just life in general, but I still melted when he touched me.

Maybe life wasn't so crappy after all.

Eric kisses were feather-light along my collar-bone and I just lay back and enjoyed the feeling of all his attention being lavished on me. I could even pretend, if I tried really hard, that we didn't have a whole word on the other side of the door waiting to tell us all their problems.

Eric had locked the door, hadn't he?

"Did you lock the door?" I asked.

"Mmm-hmm." Eric continued on with his task.

"You were confident," I said, and Eric didn't confirm or deny that fact, which was pretty much standard operating procedure for Eric.

I shed the pyjamas I'd put on after my shower, and watched as Eric removed his own t-shirt and shorts. And then we lay side by side, kissing and stroking until Eric was ready and I was very nearly jumping out of my own skin.

He rolled me onto my back and I opened my legs and welcomed the feel of him entering me. I loved that feeling, every time.

EPOV

Being this close to Sookie, being inside her was the greatest fucking feeling in the world. And she knew that. I was sure after all these years she knew that, and she felt it too. And nothing else was important right then, other than us and the fact we were still here and it didn't matter how much other shit was going on, how many fucking barbecues we went to, or how many Dora books I had to read, or whether or not the world was going to be over-run by zombies. I had Sookie and that made everything OK.

SPOV

I came, pushing myself up against Eric in order to get the release I badly needed, and then Eric followed me soon after. "I'm glad," he said to me, as we lay there afterwards. "Glad you're not feeling so shitty now."

I wished he'd been right. But sex doesn't fix everything.

**Thanks for reading!**


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